Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
Associate Education Minister David Seymour should be sacked for delivering a revised school lunch programme that is a shambles, Labour's deputy leader says.
Carmel Sepuloni, who is also the MP for Kelston, was at Kelston Boys' High School in Auckland during lunch time on Wednesday.
More than 800 students were lined up outside the main building to collect their school lunches.
About six staff members, including the principal Adeline Blair, and several students were helping distribute Pita Pit meals - sub-contracted by the government provider Compass.
Photo: RNZ / Mahvash Ikram
Blair said the meal - a small container of Teriyaki Chicken and veggies, a brownie and choice of an apple or a plum was not enough for the boys, but it was better than what they had been getting from provider Compass earlier in the year.
"We had a few days of no meals."
Blair said one of her teachers commented meals did not look not fit for consumption.
"[She said] 'it was like somebody chewed and spat it back into the into the container'. It was not the most appealing to the eye."
"The containers are extremely hot to hold because they have been reheated to a certain level 'it didn't taste of anything', that's what the boys said."
She said there was one day when special dietary requirements were not catered for.
"We had a young man who was obviously a halal consumer and he came up to us and said 'Miss Are there any halal meals?' And and I said 'I'm really sorry, but we have none'. And the look on his face just dropped because that was his meal for the day."
After several such complaints from schools all over the country, Compass sub-contracted to Pita Pit to supply the meals.
Blair said it takes up about 25 minutes to get through the students and the helpers usually end up skipping lunch themselves.
In previous years, Kelston Boys High School had their own provider and the meals were delivered to students in their classrooms.
The provider had also employed a person to help with the distribution.
Photo: RNZ / Mahvash Ikram
She said they too had been disappointed with new lunch programme after seeing it at Kelston.
Sepuloni said Associate Minister of Education David Seymour needed to be sacked over this.
"I think Compass needs to be [sacked]. I think the Minister needs to be.
"He's the one that turned this programme upside down. It was working really well prior to David Seymour's intervention, but I will put on the record too that the primary Minister of Education is Erica Stanford, she needs to stand up, take over and fix this mess because clearly David Seymour is not capable of doing so."
In a statement, Seymour said the issue was being politicised.
"There will always be people who want to politicise an issue, but it is better to deal in facts."
"The revamped school lunch program will save $170 million dollars when it is extended to all schools. At the same time it achieved 100 per cent on time delivery yesterday, and many students and principals are praising the new meals as being better than the old.
David Seymour. Photo: MARIKA KHABAZI / RNZ
"The budget we inherited from Labour left no money for school lunches in the budget for 2025, we have found the money to make it work. It is not credible to say they are in favour of doubling the budget to receive the same result."
Compass is one of the three companies that make up the School Lunch Collective, which is responsible for running the scheme.
Compass Group boss Paul Harvey told Checkpoint on Wednesday it was "mission critical" to meet KPIs.
"We are going to listen we are going to learn we are going to work with our teams to ensure that the menus turn up in a way that they enjoy eating everyday," he said.
Harvey told Checkpoint, every day Compass was improving but it was "not where they want to be".
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